The Coffee Paradox Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise of Development

This book recasts the "development problem" for countries relying on commodity exports in entirely new ways by analyzing the so-called coffee paradox--the coexistence of a "coffee boom" in consuming countries and of a "coffee crisis" in producing countries. In consuming countries, coffee continues to grow in popularity. At the same time, international coffee prices have fallen dramatically and producers receive the lowest prices in decades. As long as coffee farmers and their organizations do not control at least parts of this production, they will remain on the losing end.

Benoit Daviron is a French agronomist and agricultural economist at CIRAD. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.
Stefano Ponte is Senior Researcher at the Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen.